WASHINGTON -- Physicians need to do a better job at promoting the data that supports stronger gun-control laws, experts here said.
Despite years of work and piles of research showing a correlation between violence and the presence of guns to increased rates of gun-related deaths, doctors' arguments in favor of gun control are still being drowned out, researchers said at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting here.
"We aren't doing enough right now -- although pediatricians are doing much better than any other group -- to act on what we already know," said Michael Miller, MD, MPH, of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, during a presentation at the American Pediatric Society (APS) meeting.
For example, 10% of parents of suicidal children reported locking up prescription medication after education on injury prevention, Miller said. But in the same study, none were told about locking up their firearms.
APS President Barbara Stoll, MD, said the group wanted to host the symposium on the science of gun safety to expand the dialogue on the gun violence issue.
"We need to be stronger advocates for all issues that important to children, and this is a direct risk to kids where the data are not being listened to," Stoll told MedPage Today. "We are great advocates for interventions to reduce harm to children, listening to the data, and calling for research that'll help re-craft the conversation around evidence, not around rhetoric."
Pediatricians aren't well trained to be advocates, she said, adding she hopes future generations of physicians will help change that.
The American Academy of Pediatrics earlier this year as Washington lawmakers tried to take action on the issue in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shootings.
However, legislation was watered down by gun-rights advocates and recently stalled.
Arthur Kellerman, MD, MPH, of the RAND Health Corp. in Santa Monica, Calif., said the amount of research on gun safety has slowed in recent years, giving little new evidence to refute the arguments of gun-rights advocates.
For example, Kellerman published in the New England Journal of Medicine that found a homeowner's gun was 43 times more likely to kill a family member, friend, or acquaintance, than it was to kill an intruder. Having a gun in the home increases someone's risk of death by suicide by five-fold and of death by homicide three-fold. But that study was done back in 1986 (N Engl J Med 1986; 314: 1557-1560).
"If you're back to bumper stickers and talk radio and rhetoric and speeches, and you have nothing coming from the [gun control] side, it's easy to be misled," Kellermann said. "People have been systematically misinformed as part of a board effort to win a political fight."
While gun-rights advocates claim having a gun around makes them safer, that only 1.5% were able to get to their gun in time and 3% lost their gun to an intruder.
Miller cited a study from 2000 published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found 27% of parents of depressed adolescents, who were told about the correlation between having a gun in their home and child suicide, removed the gun at a 20-year follow-up. That compares to 17% who weren't told and obtained guns after 2 years.
To help spur new data, President Obama called for more CDC research into the cause and prevention of gun violence, as well as $30 million in funding in his latest budget proposal. But the president's call for gun violence research may run into a roadblock from gun-rights supporters in Congress, Kellermann noted.
In addition to pushing for new research, physicians also has been fighting the gun-control lobby.
"The house of medicine has many concerns," Kellermann told MedPage Today. "The [National Rifle Association] has one."
Kellermann said doctors can and should have conversations with patients and/or patients' parents about gun safety.
"People talk about the Second Amendment. There is a First Amendment too," Kellermann said. "For doctors, we have both the freedom and the duty to counsel our patients."